The 1st Academy Awards ceremony was held in 1929 with Janet Gaynor receiving the award for her roles in 7th Heaven, Street Angel, and Sunrise.[1] Currently, nominees are determined by single transferable vote within the actors branch of AMPAS; winners are selected by a plurality vote from the entire eligible voting members of the Academy.[2] In the first three years of the awards, actresses were nominated as the best in their categories. At that time, all of their work during the qualifying period (as many as three films, in some cases) was listed after the award.[3] However, during the 3rd ceremony held in 1930, only one of those films was cited in each winner's final award, even though each of the acting winners had two films following their names on the ballots.[4]

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In the following table, the years are listed as per Academy convention, and generally correspond to the year of film release in Los Angeles County; the ceremonies are always held the following year.[7] For the first five ceremonies, the eligibility period spanned twelve months from August 1 to July 31.[8] For the 6th ceremony held in 1934, the eligibility period lasted from August 1, 1932, to December 31, 1933.[8] Since the 7th ceremony held in 1935, the period of eligibility became the full previous calendar year from January 1 to December 31.[8]

^The 2nd Academy Awards is unique in being the only occasion where there were no official nominees. Subsequent research by AMPAS has resulted in a list of unofficial or de facto nominees, based on records of which films were evaluated by the judges.

A12 : Rules at the time of the first three ceremonies allowed for a performer to receive a single nomination which could honor their work in more than one film. Greta Garbo and Norma Shearer were both nominated for two different roles in the same category. Current Academy rules forbid this from happening. No official reason was ever given as to why Shearer won the award for only one of the two films she was listed for.[102]

B^ : Bette Davis's performance in Of Human Bondage was not nominated for an Oscar.[103] Several influential people at the time campaigned to have her name included on the list, so for that year (and the following year also) the Academy relaxed its rules and allowed a write-in vote.[104] Technically this meant that any performance was eligible to win the award, whether or not they were an official nominee. While the Academy does not officially recognize this as a nomination for Davis,[105][106] they have included her in the list of nominees for the 1935 ceremony on their official website.[17]